Football or Football?
by Black.Rose.Authoress
Summary: England and Germany are just going to have a friendly football game. Why is America so convinced that England is going to get himself killed?


**Football or Football?**

England wasn't sure exactly why he'd decided to invite America to watch the football match between himself and Germany this afternoon. It had just kind of happened. He'd been thinking about it and then the next minute he was on the phone, listening to Alfred's answering machine.

"You have reached the phone of THE HERO! Since I'm not here right now, you can assume that I'm out doing heroic deeds. Leave your name and message after the beep and I'll get back to you as soon as I'm done being heroic and all."

He'd almost hung up after the first sentence, but somehow managed to hold on through the rest, finally barking out after the beep, "Germany and I are having a bloody football game at twelve o'clock. I don't want you there, but knowing you, you'll show up anyway in the middle and interrupt it, so make sure you get there on time, you git."

The text that he'd received later had completely confused him, though, as it had stated—after being translated into English from what America called his 'chat speak'—"I knew you were crazy, but I didn't think you were suicidal, Iggy."

He couldn't imagine what in the world that meant. It was rather disconcerting, particularly with that nickname splashed on at the end, which had probably been added just because the American knew it would irritate him.

He decided to not worry about it, though. After all, he was pretty sure that there was something seriously wrong with the boy.

England occasionally wondered if it was his fault, but he hadn't been that bad of an older brother, right?

So he'd taxed him a little bit. It hadn't been near as bad as what his own country had been going through at the same time. The kid was just entirely ungrateful! He'd protected him from that French pervert, sending his own nation into debt, and what thanks did he get? His little brother decided to go off and declare damned independence.

He snorted in irritation at the memory and then pushed it away. No reason to think about that now. No, he needed to instead think about how he was going to beat Germany in the upcoming match.

He was pretty good at football. Sure, Germany was bigger than he was, but he was faster, and that's what really mattered in this game.

His phone suddenly vibrated again and he tugged it out to glance at the screen.

After taking a few minutes to translate, he finally figured out that it said 'Want me to bring an ambulance?'

What was _wrong_with this kid? He was really starting to wonder if France had dropped him on his head when he was a colony.

"Hello, England," Germany greeted him when he arrived at the field. The nation had been leaning against one of the goals when he'd arrived and now crossed to shake the other country's hand. The Italies were standing on the sideline, kicking the football back and forth as Spain, France, and Prussia called out suggestions. A few of them actually related to football, the rest were the sorts of suggestions that would be entirely inappropriate in mixed company.

"Angleterre!" France shouted, waving from across the field and distracting everyone else's attention to his arrival. Everyone except Romano, at least. He instead gave the ball a rather impressive kick that sent it straight into his brother's head.

This led to the younger Italian brother to burst into tears, Prussia to start laughing, Spain to run over to Romano and start exclaiming over how he needed to apologize to his brother, and Germany to sigh in exasperation and head over to the injured Italian.

"Good afternoon, Igirisu-san," a polite voice suddenly remarked from behind him, distracting him from the chaos commencing.

England whirled around, slightly surprised at the sudden voice, to see Japan watching him. The Asian nation quickly bowed in greeting, to which England hurriedly replied in kind. "Good afternoon, Japan-san," he greeted him. "I didn't know that you were coming to watch too."

He nodded once. "I thought that it would be interesting to watch a football game between you and Germany," he replied politely.

England nodded, not sure what else to say, and glanced back toward the mess of crying, cursing, and molesting—the last courtesy of France, of course, who had decided to take advantage of the chaos and grope as many people as possible, which only increased the amount of cursing coming from Romano.

And then, suddenly, he was tackled from behind.

"England! You aren't dead yet!"

"Wh—wha—" he spluttered, now face down on the ground with a rather heavy weight on his back, arms wrapped around his chest. "Wha—what are you doing, you bloody git! Get off of me!"

America obeyed thankfully and England hurriedly picked himself up and spun around to give the boy the verbal thrashing of his life.

However, he froze when he saw what the American was carrying.

"What is _that_?" he exclaimed, surprised into forgetting why exactly he was angry.

America was holding some sort of…thing. A very oddly shaped; red, white, and blue-colored thing.

"Football helmet, Iggy," America replied, as if it should be completely obvious. "You're lucky that I brought one. You could crack your skull if you forgot to wear it." He glanced over toward Germany, who was now staring at him, along with everyone else. Even the Italies had stopped crying and cursing out of surprise at his sudden arrival.

"Football helmet?" England questioned, completely confused. He'd never seen anyone wear one of these before to play football.

However, it did look a little familiar, now that he thought about it.

"What were all of those texts about?" he finally questioned irritably "and what do you have against the English language?"

"First off, it's called chat speak. Get with the times, old man. Secondly, what are you thinking, playing football against Germany? He's probably twelve times bigger than you. You're going to get crushed!"

England glanced back at the others, wondering if _they_might have any idea what the American was talking about. Part of his brain was itching as if he almost had the answer, but it was just out of reach. "America, I don't understand what you're talking a—"

"Hey, cool, you brought a soccer ball!" the American suddenly exclaimed, his five second attention span apparently kicking in, as he rushed over to the now-abandoned football sitting beside the field. "Are you planning on playing soccer after the football game? I'm pretty awesome at soccer, you know."

"Socc—oh— Bloody American, that's a _football_."

America glanced up, obviously surprised by the remark, as he dribbled the ball between his feet. "What? This isn't a football. A football is brown and shaped like this—" He made a motion with his hands to mimic the shape. "This is a soccer ball."

"You're the only bloody country that calls it that!" England exclaimed.

America stared at him for a long while and then his eyes finally widened in understanding. "Oh, yeah. Well, you all should follow my example. It would make these sorts of things a lot less confusing, Iggy."

**OWARI**

* * *

A/N: Just a little one-shot based on a convo I had with my little Brit friend… She basically mentioned Germany and England playing football during Christmas during WWI. (I think it was WWI at least)

To which I pulled an Alfred and was like "…ENGLAND WOULD DIE!" :( :( :(

She was understandably confused.

And then I was confused about why she was confused…

Woohoo for us Americans being weird and being like the only country that calls it soccer.

And it would be just like Alfred to say that everybody else should call it what he does, lol.

[Edit: Okay, and can people PLEASE stop writing and telling me that Americans aren't the only one who call it that. I'm aware of that now. I've gotten like 20 other reviews that said the same thing. It's been a year. It's HIGHLY obnoxious to keep getting the same review over and over again and I'm half-considering just deleting the stupid story to get people to quit it.]


End file.
